Technology and Old People

Nice video of guy demonstrating some Google tech to his 91 year old grandpa, who isn’t on the internet and doesn’t know what a google is:

I love his reactions as he starts to realise he is living in the future. 😀

Despite it’s problems we live in an age of technological wonder.

Makes you think about what we’ll all be bewildered by when our grandchildren teleport in for a visit 😀

I’m pretty tech savvy. I can’t wait to find out what incredible technology we will have that’s so advanced it will confuse the hell out of me in 50 years time 🙂

The MIL has problems with right click, Outlook Explorer, Internet Express and the ‘bar across the top’

rate of increase of new technology is not linear, it’s pretty much an exponential curve so chances are you won’t have to wait 50 years…

In many ways I’m glad stuff like internet shopping wasn’t around at general level when my dad was compus mentis. He was bad enough at buying tat when it was in shops – think of the horror if he got loose on eBay or Amazon!

Yeah my dad is in his late 60s and can just about manage email, Word, and online poker.

He’s blown away when I do pretty mundane things like pause the telly, make a video call, use iplayer, use voice control, or use my phone as a sat nav.

We’ve tried to get him onto Skype (I bought him a laptop with a built-in camera) but we can’t convince him that it won’t cost him any money, so he phones instead because he understands the billing 😕

I can’t wait to find out what incredible technology we will have that’s so advanced it will confuse the hell out of me in 50 years time

I’m hoping some big advances will be in the way technology understands me so I don’t need to understand a damn thing as an end user.

My Dad is 71, and uses Facebook, Twitter, email, and has just started redoing his band website in WordPress instead of writing the raw HTML.

Mum, on the other hand, always double-clicks on web links 😉

Mum, on the other hand, always double-clicks on web links

I had a boss that did that. It was infuriating to watch, especially as he frequently got into issues because the site had already started to respond to his first click.

The worst of it was, we were a software house and he was the Technical Director!

Wait until he finds out there’s porn, he’ll have a stroke.

Wait until he finds out there’s porn, he’ll have a stroke.

Several probably.

molgrips – Member
I’m pretty tech savvy. I can’t wait to find out what incredible technology we will have that’s so advanced it will confuse the hell out of me in 50 years time

‘technology’ has arrived, yes it’ll improve, and change a bit, but in 50 years we’ll still be using computers to communicate, work, shop, and entertain ourselves.

there’ll be big changes in the way we can interact with the technology, less button clicking, less downloading of drivers, less typing, less off-and-onning, etc.

the most confusing aspect for old giffers like us will be just how *easy” things will be.

i’m trying to get a NAS working at home, it’s proving a bit tricky, but i’m enjoying myself, and learning a few things. Will my 6yr old nephew ever have to do this? or his kids? probably not.

dammit, beaten by the rubber buccaneer

Did a thread on this a few years ago. It was prompted by getting my mum to start Skype. She was still talking to me on the phone when it started up and was a bit reluctant about hanging up once we’d got Skype going.

“No, honestly mum, you can actually hang up now…we can still talk.” 😀

I’ve convinced my aunt, who’s in her 80’s, to persevere with her ipad. The mention of how I can shoe shop by specifying price and free returns saw her eyes light up. 😀

I can’t stand touchscreens. I’m going to be very bewildered by tech when I’m old/older.

My parents (nearly 70) are fine with tech. MIL can’t use anything though and keeps her mobile turned off in case someone calls. Although somehow, and I suspect with a lot of help, she has a very good website for her artwork.

Some ‘old’ people are great with tech, just cos one 91 year old had never heard of Google hardly means they all haven’t.

Most tech is badly overhyped IMO, see only today the Guardian are slagging off the Apple Watch.

in 50 years we’ll still be using computers to communicate, work, shop, and entertain ourselves.

Seems likely – but it will be a lot less obvious that it is “a computer” and “computers” will be in pretty much everything (even more so than they are already).

I remember my old mans reaction when he first saw a satnav,
It talks to satellites in space 😯
It’s got all the maps of the U.K and Europe and will work out directions to where you want to go 😯
IT TALKS!!!!! 😯
Only the Enterprise landing on the lawn would have surprised him more,

The worst of it was, we were a software house and he was the Technical Director!

ouch… trying to think if its the same mutual person we have in common. trawling my memory now!

‘Scuse me… I’ve just turned 60 and am perfectly at home with IT. Not all 60 year-olds have closed minds.

A trainer has been recruited at work to train all employees on a new IFS ERP system and I’m actually looking forward to the challenge.

My mother is 87 this year, she emails and texts, does her banking and some shopping online, and generally uses the internet like a normally tech savvy person. Last time I went round she’d used the ipad and the printer to make up some labels for her cake & biscuit tins.

My mum has always been intrigued by technology though. I came home from school one day when i was maybe 12 or 13 and she was sat in front of the telly playing Adventure on the Atari 2600.

Getting her up and running on the internet/iPad took a little patience and some very slow and structured lessons but there’s not been a “tech support” call for well over a year now.

kcal: I may have said too much 😳 (it was a previous employer)

It talks to satellites in space

Nah, it doesn’t talk, it just listens. 😀

Pfft. My dad’s 91 too. He owns a laptop & uses the internet when he’s in the mood, but is too deaf to get the benefit of skype.
I must prompt him again sometime.

Nah, it doesn’t talk, it just listens.

Don’t be so pedantic..
I’m old so if I say it talks it bloody well talks!
Bloodybloodybloodyyoungsmartarsestodaybloodybloodybloody….

I often wonder whether my amazement at how technology has advanced is because it is advanced or just because I’m no longer the “younger generation” 😆

Some ‘old’ people are great with tech, just cos one 91 year old had never heard of Google hardly means they all haven’t.

‘Scuse me… I’ve just turned 60 and am perfectly at home with IT. Not all 60 year-olds have closed minds.

Woah woah – don’t get your jimmies all twisted – I didn’t start this thread to slag off old people. It was just a commentary on how fast technology moves and where we might be when we’re 91.

Now go get your bovril ready, I think Countryfile is on in a bit. 😉

I was talking about almost the opposite with a colleague yesterday. I’ve got a couple of teenage Apprentices working under me and it suddenly occurred to me, unless they’ve got very good memories of early childhood they’ve never known a non-connected world. The web as always been there for them.

Then I realised, christ, I’ve turned into my granddad, when I was little he used to reminisce about when they first got a TV and they didn’t even have four channels like they do now and I’d be sitting there thinking “bloody hell, you must be ancient.”

/stands down/

To be fair there are or were quirks in many colleagues – in general. I worked – in a previous life – with a broad range of folk but on the whole they were very good at their job and idiosyncrasies were tolerated.

Certainly numbered a number of ‘special’ programmers among my colleagues but they were very very good and what they did. The 3000 line subroutine was a masterpiece – of something. But luckily it worked. Eeek.

Thinking a little more about my comment ^ I do genuinely believe that technology amazes me these days because it is genuinely helpful and accessible to everyday users rather than – not that many years ago – geeks people with time on their hands to learn it.

As a great example I’m often away with work on a Tuesday night and stay in the more or less the same location. When I get in the car my iPhone tells me how long to get to where I’m going. There’s not necessarily anything in my phone calendar for it to know where I’m going or the time I intend to be there; it’s just learnt my habits. This is what amazes me and make tech so accessible and useful.

I often wonder whether my amazement at how technology has advanced is because it is advanced or just because I’m no longer the “younger generation”

Well the flip side to all this are the numerous videos of millennials being bewildered and confused by things like fax machines, floppy disks, VCRs, dial up internet etc 😀

We’ve come a long way since the 90s internet :

just a commentary on how fast technology moves

Does it really though? email has been around for decades, internet browsers for 20 years, search engines similar, mobile phones longer. GPS is nearly 40 years old, and the game changer of letting civilians use it is 20.

There was one of those quizzes on the BBC website a few months back based around “do you know what your kids are doing online”. I don’t have kids, and I’m not even 30, but I do know what YOLO and ROTFL stand for and know what snapchat and whatsapp are. I think I scored 2 out of 10!

Kids and the next 15-20 years scare me! At least if they were just looking at smut I’d have a clue what was going on!

My parents have used ebay. I haven’t.
They even have a blog.

But it did take my dad ages to understand that the tail of a mouse comes out of its nose, not out of its ass.
And at one point, there were exactly 2 icons on the desktop, with post it note with arrows on them stuck to the monitor to explain which one is to read email, and which one starts solitaire.

Does it really though? email has been around for decades, internet browsers for 20 years

Cars have been around for over two hundred years and have barely evolved in that time.

20 years ago computers looked like those videos above – these days people carry phones (or watches) that have several orders of magnitude more power than those computers.

Far from moving fast, I have always thought technological improvements have been way to slow! The lack of any real progress is disappointing

My dad (81) was always into his gadgets. Which is great for me as i get the hand-me- downs when a new gadget comes out. I got him a mac mini a few years back for a bit of surfing. I got dozens of ‘call outs’ to come round and have a look as it was broken (it never was). Best was a proper emergency. ‘Can you come round now son? I think it’s on fire – there’s smoke coming out of it!’ I got him to unplug it and rushed round to see what was wrong this time.

You know the way the mac has a dock? And you can add and remove shortcuts from it? Well he removed (no doubt by accident – just like the time his screen went all blue – he’d accidently created hundreds of untitled folders on the desktop with his elbow – covering the entire) an alias from the dock and a little animated puff of smoke appeared.

That “Teens React to Windows 95” is kind of odd. Ok, I get dial-up Internet would seem weird to them, but I don’t really understand why separate power switches for PC and monitor would be such a mind-blowing concept when modern desktop PCs are exactly the same, or using a cable rather than Wi-Fi. It’s basically “Teens who have never used a desktop computer because they have iPads react…” isn’t it.

I’ve been showing my Apprentices some old tech – I bought a ZX Spectrum in a little while back – and it’d have never occurred to me that a PC of that vintage might be in any way unusual to them. And yet, “Windows 95? Like, 1995? That’s before I was born!”

‘Can you come round now son? I think it’s on fire – there’s smoke coming out of it!’
…
a little animated puff of smoke appeared.

That reminds me of a similar tale. I once took a Tech Support call from an elderly gent who was angry and panicky. He was demanding that we send someone round RIGHT NOW to collect his new computer before the police arrived to arrest him.

Transpired, it’d crashed with an error “this program has performed an illegal operation”…

but I don’t really understand why separate power switches for PC and monitor would be such a mind-blowing concept

Put a modern iMac in front of someone who has never used one before and ask them to find the on button.

Just to emphasise the point a little.

The first general-purpose programmable digital electronic computer was ENIAC, which was first announced in 1946 (when that old boy was 21).

ENIAC cost the equivalent of $6,816,000, weighed 27 tonnes, occupied 167 m² and required 150 kW of electricity to run.

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These days you can readily buy an off-the-shelf microprocessor like an ATtiny85, that is the size of my pinkie nail, costs less than a dollar, weighs less than a gram, requires 0.025 watts and can do in a second what the ENIAC would take all day to do.

And that’s just basic consumer stuff – not even close to bleeding edge tech.